Greek Food & Cultural Festival is this weekend

Richard GorelickThe Baltimore Sun

The 41st Annual Greek Food & Cultural Festival starts Friday. This is the one at the Greek Cathedral of the Annunciation in Midtown-Belvedere, when everyone sits on the cathedral's steps in the sunshine and stuffs themselves silly.

Under the big tent on Preston Street, there's stuff like gyros, souvlaki and fried calamari. But you have to go inside the cathedral and down into the basement for the baked lamb shank, spanakopita, pastitio, roast chicken and stuffed grape leaves.

New this year: a Saturday night party in the tent, with a live band. They're going to keep serving food and wine until everybody falls down. Also new under the tent - a baklava sundae bar.

The pastry shop, by the way, is downstairs, too. That's where you get baklava, loukomades, galaktoboureko and other honeyed treats, all of them made by church members.

I think it would be really funny if you went into the pastry room and kept quietly but firmly insisting that everything is entirely different than it was last year. Just to see what they say.